


The Gift

by KAL (JadeElite)



Series: In the World of Rina Nightcrest [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:41:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5832952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeElite/pseuds/KAL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I WROTE A BEAUTIFUL SUMMARY THEN THE PAGE GLITCHED</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gift

I don’t know what he sees in me, why after all these years, all the stupid things I’ve done, and he would still look at me with such adoration. So many dates missed and nights spent up worrying about me while I’m off in a faraway place, and he doesn’t know if I’ll make it back this time. In him I see a normalcy that I never got to have growing up, but I’m too young to say that, twenty three years on this earth, and not a single one normal. I suppose it’s because being extraordinary gets exhausting. Normal is…oh shit, what is he saying?

“Cassidy, you’re freaking people out again.” He takes a salt shaker out of the air before it can float off into the sky and not be seen again for a very long time. I laugh a bit, wondering who would find the object, where they would find it. Perhaps in a rice paddy in Osaka, some farmer picking it up on a hot afternoon and wondering where it came from, and never being able to guess that it came from the table of a cafe in Paris.

"Well Bryan if you didn't have such amazing eyes I could keep my energy in check." Back to the table our plates and silverware slowly fall. Clank and clink, sharp sounds. I look at the plate in front of me, I only ate half my omelet, and Bryan had just finished pestering me about how I should be eating more, when I lost my concentration. That’s been happening a lot lately, suddenly unable to focus and finding that my gifts have come out to play while Cassidy’s mind is away.

"Oh yes it's my fault." He smiles, salts what's left of his eggs and puts the shaker down. People around us resume eating, most of them are calm, and a few stare though, worried and confused. I wave at one small child, a look of wonder in her eyes, her small brain trying to grasp what I am and what I mean.

“You know, two years ago people would have ran screaming if I did that.” I notice a few people that are too calm, the people who are used to this, the ones who used to hide, but no longer have to.

“The world has changed a lot since we were kids. Since you were locked up in that theater day and night, and I would be watching you dance with those… creatures that you created. I’m glad you’re going to be able to start dancing for real, you’ll nail that audition I know it.” He finishes his eggs and watches people passing on the sidewalk, once you would never guess that more than half those people were something not human, and now they walk with their disguises off and their heads held up proud.  
A newspaper is slammed down on our table, rattling our mugs on their saucers. “Hundreds of thousands of yuan in property damage, three hundred people dead, and thousands injured. The Beijing government is calling for the council to cover the cost of the clean-up, do you know how hard it is to convince human political people to calm down and let us handle things our way. For Christ’s sake they think fixing it with magic is going to make it worse it’s literally how Rome was built. And I have to deal with this because you have to go showboating every time there’s some battle you want to fight, couldn’t you have handled it more….discreetly?” The girls with sharp teeth and a yellow eye, pokes at the headline.

I lean over it and read aloud, “Pekin attaque par des sorciers!” I take the paper and read the first few lines, I stumble a bit in the translation but otherwise manage. “The media never gets these things right. They weren’t wizards, they were Siberian frost demons amped up on vampire venom being controlled by that gang of vamps from Shanghai. They were bent on leveling the city trust me I minimized the damage, they were already started in on taking out buildings when I stopped them.”  
Bryan takes the paper and starts to read it. “I trust you wouldn’t have gotten involved unless you knew you could handle it?”

“She shouldn’t have gotten involved at all, but of course, you just have to expose yourself, make it easier for your father to find you.” She grabs an unoccupied chair and pulls it up to the table, upon sitting she takes my coffee and begins dumping cream in it.  
“Rina, who gave you the almighty stick up your bony little demon witch ass that made you think you have the right to decide what I do with my life?” I push away Bryan’s coffee as he offers it to me, smiling my thanks, but I have enough energy now.  
“Our brother, for some reason he wants you to be safe. And Malbeth knows he’s not going to take care of that himself.” She takes a sip of the half coffee and grimaces. “Furansu no kohi wa hidoi desu.”

“Maybe it would taste better if you didn’t drown the flavor out with cream.” My voice is lower than a human range can pick up, but the way those silver animal ears on her head twitch I know she heard it. “And please stop making it sound like we’re related it makes me really uncomfortable to have people thinking we’re sisters when we’re not.”

Bryan begins to say something, I believe to ask about what happened in Beijing, but Rina interrupts. “Why are you so hell bent on this idea that you need to protect humanity anyways, all you’re doing is putting people in more danger.” The sun begins to show itself from behind the gray clouds, in its light Rina’s reddens a bit, and she shudders, it’s almost hunt time but instead she is here lecturing me about my life decisions. 

But it’s Bryan that answers, determined to make her acknowledge him. “Because the society of hunters is dead, and since you saved the world once and decided you did your part and don’t need to do anymore, somebody needs to do it instead. You have the power to protect us, you did a lot more dangerous stuff than she has but now you just sit around ragging on people who give a shit.” His voice is scary, and I lean back, surprised. She looks at me, I know why she stopped, and there are so many reasons. I remember her coming to the theater, my home, in a drunken stupor years ago, and listening to her cry to my mother about all those things that broke her. There is a reason my brother only communicates with us in letters, unable to look at her, remember the terrible chain of events that he started. She is losing her mind, ever so slowly, like everything like her, those that are not of a single blood, and she could have been safe, and sane if not for him.

“You know there are a lot of immortals that will stand up for you if they were given the chance, there doesn’t need to be one person taking care of all of it. I have a kid now, I’m not keen on leaving her without a mom because I decided that I should go risk my life instead of somebody else. But it doesn’t have to be you either Cassidy.” Rarely does Rina mention her daughter in public, and the way she’s looking at me I realize she knows my secret.

I signal the waitress for a check as she passes. “I can’t live on the hopes that somebody will stop a tragedy that I’m about to witness, so I’m going to step in. If I can save people then I should, it’s the right thing to do.”

“We aren’t superheroes!” With a swift motion she rips the medical bandage on my arm away, revealing the deep burn on my skin. “We aren’t obligated to do anything! Especially you, you aren’t like us Cassidy, you may have powers, you may be able to do incredible things, but your body is human, and you can die! You can die so much easier than any of us, and it’s not fair to the people who love you for you to be putting yourself in harm’s way. What about everything we’ve sacrificed, everything your MOTHER sacrificed, to protect you from your father, are you going to throw that all away, let him find you, just to protect humanity. It’s not worth it!” She stands up, towering over me, despite how small she is, she will always be huge. “It infuriates me to no end that despite everything you know, you don’t have an ounce of fear in you. That is what will be your downfall.”

I grab her arm quickly. “We should talk about this more privately.” I look at Bryan, who just sighs and nods. Then he is not there, neither is the table, the café, the street. It’s just me and her, somewhere far away, a cliff off a small mountain side, the sun just rising, shining brightly over the fields below, but we stand in shadows. She catches me as I start to fall, my legs turned to jelly and my head a bomb. 

“Careful, you can’t do it without thinking about it, I’ve told you this so many times.” Rina lowers me to the ground, helps he sit. Her voice is soft, and her entire body language has completely changed. 

“What’s really wrong? You don’t get that upset in public, you never do.” I look out across the horizon, orienting myself, focusing on the familiarity of this place.

“You know I’m never who I seem to be, it’s easier to make myself look to him like I’m a jackass than to let him know I care. Because then I’d have to deal with him calling me up all worried when you go off to fight some fight, in addition to your mother, it’s exhausting just to keep her calm.” She pulls a flash out of her jacket pocket and opens it, but I don’t smell alcohol.

“You don’t care, I don’t know why you intervene in my life because I know for a fact that you don’t care.” I pick of a rock and throw it off the cliff side, listen to it bounce down. “This needs to stop.”

“Don’t give me the ‘you aren’t a child anymore’ speech, I really don’t feel like explaining the infinite levels of wrong.” She drinks from the flask, and throws a stone to follow mine.

“You suck.” I throw another rock, it chases after her. “You really are a jackass, but you try to be a good person, and you suck at it.”

She tilts her head back and cackles like some witch out of a fairy tale, the sound carries far out into the mountains, scared mountain goats bleat somewhere nearby. When she stops everything is quiet, there is only the goats. 

Some form of insight hits me, I remember the stories I’ve heared about when she was young, the things she did, the way she acted. I look at her. “No, that’s not right. You are a good person, one of the best, somebody who would do anything to keep the people she loves safe. But you try to be the jackass that you were when you were a teenager because you think it will keep them safe from what you will become, so that they won’t hurt so much later.

“What makes you think that?” Rina sighs, watching the light move across the mountains as the clouds cross the sky.

“Because, even though you knew it would stop you from ever being able to be sane, you absorbed existence itself into your mind, to save the only other candidate for the task because you knew it would kill them, even if the outcome would be the same, saving the world. When you did, you saw all the good in the world, and how it never stops fighting evil. You lost your cynicism instantly, didn’t you? I mean how could you not?” I take a breath, trying to formulate the words, trying to explain all those stories I have heard, about a girl who was scared, but rose against a darkness that I hope I never have to fight. “How could a good person, who saw nothing but the evil in the world, be able to continue berating the universe for screwing her over, when she’s finally shown that there are more people that want her happy, then want her dead?”

I hear her fists beat against the ground she sits upon, hear it crack beneath her hands, as she tries to fight the conflict of good and bad in her head. Trying to remember that she is not defined by either of those two concepts. I feel her, trying to remember that she is Rina, feel her fighting the losing battle for sanity. As she tries to remember that she is not defined by her past or her future, by what anybody says she will or has done. Each crack in the ground is a memory as she tries to remember that right now she is a wife and a mother. I watch her try to remember that she is only defined by this moment, what she is and what she does right now and every moment. That with every breath she takes she is Rina at present, and not Rina of the past or future. Because that is the only ways she can even have a hope of being something worth all that she has been given, and worthy of fighting to reclaim what was taken. 

And I throw stones off the side of the mountain and try to remember too.


End file.
